tragabigzanda wrote:I love JS but never read this. What’d you think?
I think it totally depends on how interested you are in a description of the Russian people in 1947. In the last two years I've read a decent amount of Russian fiction and historical accounts of Russia from revolution to present, so I was curious of the picture Steinbeck would paint of it. The book itself is short, just over 200 pages, but probably could have easily been reduced by half without losing much. I think that's mostly because there was only so much they were able to do and they spent most of their time alternating between total boredom waiting to go somewhere and being overwhelmed with exhaustion by doing so much in such a short span of time. The Russia that he describes feels very different than the histories I've read--yes, extremely bureaucratic but ultimately with happy, hard-working, well-fed people. He states throughout the book his intention for the trip and the book to be apolitical. It doesn't focus on any political personalities at all, except insofar as what people say about them. I enjoyed his observations on the Stalin's status among the people and it made me curious to learn more about what everyday citizens felt as de-Stalinization took place less than a decade after Steinbeck's trip.
tl;dr, if you are interested in every day Russian life in 1947 (or at least the every day lives of Russians that the Kremlin allowed Steinbeck to visit), then it's worth a quick read. If not, it certainly isn't essential Steinbeck, although it will be an interesting point of comparison when I finally read Travels with Charley.
I'm being intentionally vague in case you want to read it, but I'd be happy to sketch out the major takeaways if you want.
